...Asghar Farhadi’s Oscar could take Iranian cinema to the global market
I saw A Separation recently. It's a damn good drama. The actors slip into their roles with remarkable ease. The thing about cinema is its ability to focus on events on the ground. A Separation shows us a side of Iran that is accessible, understandable and relatable. This is not the Iran of nuclear brinkmanship but one where common people struggle to carry on with their lives and make the best of what's on offer.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Pakistan's Oscar moment...
...An award and after
...the Oscar will truly come to Pakistan when it compels authorities to turn the acid attack bill into a law, and when the electronic media actually follows a case to recovery with gender sensitivity.
Conversation ...
... Poet Christian Wiman on Love, Faith, and Cancer | Moyers & Company | BillMoyers.com. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
I loved Wiman's book Poetry and Survival.
I loved Wiman's book Poetry and Survival.
Together at last ...
... Edith Pearlman | Butterflies and Pariahs | Cultural Conversation by Richard B. Woodward - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Ms. Pearlman often writes about well-educated, middle-class Jewish men, women and children living in or around Boston, and she embodies all of those qualities. Like one of her heroes, John Updike, she has invented a New England suburb (his was Tarbox, hers is Godolphin) as a setting for characters.But it would be unfair to typecast her as a regionalist, an ethnic or women's author, or even a realist. What people do for a living matters in a number of her stories only as a reference point for action that darts off in unexpected and sometimes fantastical directions.
How it happened ...
... Publishing’s Ecosystem on the Brink: The Backstory | The Authors Guild Blog. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Even with a large budget, directly affecting the success of Amazon’s overall business is a tall order for a new publishing imprint. Amazon pulled in well north of $40 billion in revenue last year (final numbers aren’t yet in), dwarfing the combined revenues of the Big Six publishers.
Not surprising, really ...
... Why do films do such a bad job of portraying old people? | Film | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Actually, films don't do such a hot job portraying lots of things. Professions, for instance. I've never seen a film about a newspaper that seemed at all like what I experienced working for one.
Progress ...
... Beyond Blue 6: The Great Divorce | Via Meadia.
Note also this:
I can still remember the feeling I had back in the early eighties when I first began to see how low wage manufacturing in the developing world plus the globalization of finance were going to rip up the social fabric I identified with progress and stability. I see many people, some on the left, some in the center, going through that kind of moment today. My first reaction, and that of many people today, was to cling tighter to the blue model as I sensed its fragility and vulnerability. But over time I’ve come to see this breakdown and the transition to something new as the next stage in the story of social and human progress, rather that as some kind of horrible return to savagery.
Note also this:
In the absence of any meaningful connection to the world of work and production, many young people today develop identities through consumption and leisure activities alone. You are less what you do and make than what you buy and have: what music you listen to, what clothes you wear, what games you play, where you hang out and so forth. These are stunted, disempowering identities for the most part and tend to prolong adolescence in unhelpful ways. They contribute to some very stupid decisions and self-defeating attitudes. Young people often spend a quarter century primarily as critics of a life they know very little about: as consumers they feel powerful and secure, but production frightens and confuses them.
Hmm ...
... The Forgetting Pill Erases Painful Memories Forever | Wired Magazine | Wired.com. (Hat tip, Lee Lowe.)
Lee messages that she's not quite sure what to make of this. Neither am I. The ancient Greeks thought that forgetting -- at least certain things -- was a blessing from the gods. I think you have to take the biter with the sweet. I certainly would never take a forgetting pill.
Like any other ...
... The Writer’s Job by Tim Parks | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books.
It’s rather as if the spontaneous Romanticism of the nineteenth-century poets had become a job description; we know what a romantic is (his politics, his behavior patterns), we know that is the way to literary greatness, so let’s do it. Coetzee’s novel Youth captures with fine wryness the trials of a methodical young man seeking to make a career out of becoming the kind of writer he is not.
I believe John Betjeman used to give his occupation as poet and hack. I think I could say the same. But I did it the old-fashioned way: I sort of fell into it (except the poetry, which was always a private vice).
Take the test ...
... Are you scientifically literate? Take our quiz - Composing about 78 percent of the air at sea level, what is the most common gas in the Earth's atmosphere? - CSMonitor.com.
I am pleased to report I that I passed, not exactly with colors, but well enough.
For those who like this sort of thing ...
... this is the sort of thing they like: Women in Literary Arts: The 2011 Count. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The Beeb's new home...
...Lights out at the BBC
We were wrong when we thought we would kill off the newspapers. They adapted to meet our threat. If they could not beat us on speed of news delivery they could – and did – slaughter us on the features pages and in the opinion columns. They chose a battleground on which the state broadcaster, shackled by guidelines that demanded impartiality and balance over polemic and opinion, could not compete. I remember when we decided to include the equivalent of a leader column in the Nine O’Clock News. It lasted, I think, a month.
The promise of narrative ...
... The Millions : Post-40 Bloomers: Walker Percy, The Original Moviegoer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I can only report that something did happen and it happened all of a sudden. Other writers have reported a similar experience. It is not like learning a skill or a game at which, with practice, one gradually improves. One works hard all right, but what comes, comes all of a sudden and as a breakthrough. One hits on something… It is almost as if the discouragement were necessary, that one has first to encounter despair before one is entitled to hope.
All rather boring...
...Straight and narrow: how pop lost its gay edge
...the lack of gay influence on rock music is a sign of increasing tolerance. "There's not much gay influence to be seen in the music business these days because gays are accepted, nobody cares. Young people are so aware of all things gay that there's nothing new for them to take from it. Gays have gone normal. It's all rather boring."
Thought for the day ...
The greatest menace to our capacity for contemplation is the incessant fabrication of tawdry empty stimuli which kill the receptivity of the soul.
- Josef Pieper
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
In conclusion ...
... Poetry Review editor Fiona Sampson resigns | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Cultish intolerance ...
... New Statesman - The God wars. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Ultimately, the problem with militant neo-atheism is that it represents a profound category error. Explaining religion - or, indeed, the human experience - in scientific terms is futile. "It would be as bizarre as to launch a scientific investigation into the truth of Anna Karenina or love," de Botton says. "It's a symptom of the misplaced confidence of science . . . It's a kind of category error. It's a fatally wrong question and the more you ask it, the more you come up with bizarre and odd answers."
Bryan describes himself as agnostic. I am, of course, a practicing Catholic. But my operational definition of faith, which I think is vastly more important than belief, is John Henry Newman's: being capable of bearing doubt. I recommend it for all agnostics.
Let the healthy be...
...If You Feel O.K., Maybe You Are O.K.
The basic strategy behind early diagnosis is to encourage the well to get examined — to determine if they are not, in fact, sick. But is looking hard for things to be wrong a good way to promote health? The truth is, the fastest way to get heart disease, autism, glaucoma, diabetes, vascular problems, osteoporosis or cancer ... is to be screened for it. In other words, the problem is overdiagnosis and overtreatment.
Thought for the day ...
Every one rushes elsewhere and into the future, because no one wants to face one's own inner self.
- Michel de Montaigne, born on this date in 1533
Monday, February 27, 2012
This or that...
Continuing with my irritation with journalistic flip-flops, I have noticed that the perfectly fine "soft-spoken" has been taken over by the rather tacky "softly spoken". From the FT: "Ruhl, a playwright, is a courteous, softly spoken American."
Another one: telecom vs telecoms. Everyone seemed perfectly happy using the former, and it was used an awful lot too thanks to a scam in India that scaled mammoth proportions. But now "telecoms" is in vogue and no-one knows why.
Can you think of other such inexplicable changes?
Another one: telecom vs telecoms. Everyone seemed perfectly happy using the former, and it was used an awful lot too thanks to a scam in India that scaled mammoth proportions. But now "telecoms" is in vogue and no-one knows why.
Can you think of other such inexplicable changes?
Not as advertised ...
... The University Bookman: Eliot Through His Letters. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
... the letters do not simply chronicle a broken life. They also reveal truly humane aspects of Eliot’s character that seldom appear in popular caricatures of the artist. One of the earliest letters to Murry is written in consolation for the loss of his wife of only a few years, the prominent artist Katherine Mansfield. Any who have experienced such loss can appreciate the tenderness and sensitivity of Eliot’s words.
Attention, America ...
... Indian book market in "rapid growth" | The Bookseller. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I shall be interested to what Vikram has to say about this.
I shall be interested to what Vikram has to say about this.
The Professor's nuance ...
... No blood on the carpet. How disappointing. - Richard Dawkins - RichardDawkins.net - RichardDawkins.net. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It would be nice to think the journalists might have learned something from this experience. I suppose it’s probably asking too much that some of them might get around to actually reading The God Delusion.
Well, I not only read it, I reviewed it. I can't say I was as impressed as he seems to be.
Use your own words ...
... Plagiarists, beware: the internet will find you out | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Speaking of Peter De Vries ...
... this is a good piece: The Return of Peter DeVries - Westport Magazine.
Here's another piece, by D.G. Myers: Peter De Vries.
Here's another piece, by D.G. Myers: Peter De Vries.
Thought for the day ...
The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.
- Peter De Vries, born on this date in 1910
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Monkey see, monkey do ...
... How scientists taught monkeys the concept of money. Not long after, the first prostitute monkey appeared. (Hat tip, Joseph Chovanes.)
I love the captions.
I love the captions.
Minding and mattering ...
... Dave Lull alerted me that Bryan Appleyard had tweeted about this: Jerry Fodor reviews ‘How the Mind Works’ by Steven Pinker and ‘Evolution in Mind’ by Henry Plotkin - LRB 22 January 1998.
Given that what we call matter is now understood to be constellations of electrical impulses that proceed in a manner often so random as almost to seem willful, perhaps we should think about pondering Thomas Aquinas's view of man as a composite creature, not so much as a scientific theorem, but as a metaphor more insightful than any other. Soul, in this sense, would be that quantum dimension and body the outward sign thereof. Just a thought.
... here [Pinker] is on why we like to read fiction: ‘Fictional narratives supply us with a mental catalogue of the fatal conundrums we might face someday and the outcomes of strategies we could deploy in them. What are the options if I were to suspect that my uncle killed my father, took his position, and married my mother?’ Good question. Or what if it turns out that, having just used the ring that I got by kidnapping a dwarf to pay off the giants who built me my new castle, I should discover that it is the very ring that I need in order to continue to be immortal and rule the world? It’s important to think out the options betimes, because a thing like that could happen to anyone and you can never have too much insurance. At one point Pinker quotes H.L. Mencken’s wisecrack that ‘the most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true.’ Quite so.
Given that what we call matter is now understood to be constellations of electrical impulses that proceed in a manner often so random as almost to seem willful, perhaps we should think about pondering Thomas Aquinas's view of man as a composite creature, not so much as a scientific theorem, but as a metaphor more insightful than any other. Soul, in this sense, would be that quantum dimension and body the outward sign thereof. Just a thought.
Today's Inquirer reviews ...
... yours truly reviews Michel Houellebecq's The Map and the Territory: Prize French prose with, of all things, laughs.
... What dreams may come.
... A masterwork framed in black.
... A bungled chance at talks with Iran 'without precondition'.
... What dreams may come.
... A masterwork framed in black.
... A bungled chance at talks with Iran 'without precondition'.
Thought for the day ...
Because one doesn't like the way things are is no reason to be unjust towards God.
- Victor Hugo, born on this date in 1802
Perversely irresistible...
...The gay Nabokov
Nabokov was the archenemy of cliche, a writer passionately committed to overturning tired literary conventions through careful observation of the real world, but his homosexual characters are as a rule egregiously stereotyped.
Getting the name right..
...No faux pas in any language
A big part of Mr Alger’s job is research into sound symbolism – the notion that sounds signal different types of meaning. He cites Swiffer, the Procter & Gamble mop, which Lexicon named. “Swiffer has a ‘sw’ cluster. All different words like swipe, swift, signal a smooth meaning. The research helps us determine what sounds work with different brands.”
Ear to the ground...
...Avoiding fluff is surest route to success
As a student at a B-school right now, I can wax eloquent on the inability of the education system to develop critical thinking. In India particularly, because of the grip of the government on institutes of excellence such as the IITs and IIMs, the debate on higher education comes to rest on the demand for autonomy and how that ties in with accountability and the need for these institutes to maintain their brand equity.
But how much, and how often, do these places encourage thinking and self-learning? The routine of regular end-term exams ensures that most students are in the race for better marks since that affects their CGPAs and, ultimately, their chances come placement time. No wonder business so often finds itself in the grips of groupthink, leading to disaster.
As a student at a B-school right now, I can wax eloquent on the inability of the education system to develop critical thinking. In India particularly, because of the grip of the government on institutes of excellence such as the IITs and IIMs, the debate on higher education comes to rest on the demand for autonomy and how that ties in with accountability and the need for these institutes to maintain their brand equity.
But how much, and how often, do these places encourage thinking and self-learning? The routine of regular end-term exams ensures that most students are in the race for better marks since that affects their CGPAs and, ultimately, their chances come placement time. No wonder business so often finds itself in the grips of groupthink, leading to disaster.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
For Saturday night ...
... Paul Davis On Crime: Hello It's Me: A Taste Of Todd Rundgren.
I saw Todd Rundgren I don't know how many years ago perform in Rittenhouse Square when he was with the Nazz. The adorable Betsy Green met him a could of summers ago in Woodstock, NY. She is an aren't fan.
Read and enter ...
... Review: Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd – and win a copy - The Dabbler.
Waiting for Sunrise is my first encounter with the work of William Boyd. Had I known that he was such an exponent of the almost-lost art of descriptive writing, I would have acquired all of his books as they hit the shelves. He is able, seemingly effortlessly, to take the reader directly into a scene ...
Well, it's true ...
... E-books Can’t Burn | James Russell Ament.
I'm with Jim on this. I like my Kindle and I like my books.
I'm with Jim on this. I like my Kindle and I like my books.
Up to a point ...
... Enlightenment for sale - FT.com.
We have consistently undervalued our universities in Britain – indeed, in Europe. Policy has been based on crude and largely false assumptions about the relationship between higher education and the growth of gross domestic product. The humanities have been treated too often like nugatory fripperies, while science is favoured for its more apparent economic value. Universities have been dealt with as though their primary purpose was social engineering.
Overattentive prose ...
... Votaries of the Snake - Commentary Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A contemporary novelist can get away with “foregrounding the rendering” (as Cohen puts it) if and only if his prose style is the visible dance of his thought, if and only if the action of his novel is in the thought, and if and only if his thought is wild and wonderful.
But not to die for ...
... A Cassoulet Worth Fighting Over - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
So delicious was their creation—named after cassole, the glazed earthenware pot in which it was cooked—that the townsfolk of Castelnaudary quickly deployed their renewed strength. Their mission was not to defeat the Black Prince, who went on to take their king prisoner at Poitiers, but instead to do battle with their compatriots in Toulouse and Carcassonne who had appropriated the recipe and, they believed, were ruinously altering it. Some fought for the inclusion of mutton, others for goose, still others for duck. When the people of Toulouse threw tomatoes in the mix, shouts of "Quelle sacrilège!" could be heard echoing throughout the countryside. Tempers, feuds—and stews—simmered for the next 600 years. And then, in 1970, Castelnaudary created La Grande Confrérie du Cassoulet, a brotherhood to defend their pride and tomato-, confit- and mutton-free glory.
Thought for the day ...
The world is a beautiful book, but of little use to him who cannot read it.
- Carlo Goldoni, born on this date in 1707
Buddhist economics...
...In economics, small is beautiful
Schumacher was not just a social philosopher but a practical observer of large-scale social organizations, particularly bureaucracies. The realist side of him can be found from this quote: “An ounce of practice is generally worth more than a ton of theory.”
Dishabille as art...
...Conversations in the nude
By far, the most interesting part of what I do is asking people if they would pose naked for me. They instantly imagine I have ulterior motives. Very few take the offer at its face value. I get varied reactions—chiefly outrage, of course. I am told: “Are you out of your mind?” “Do you know what you are asking?” “You dirty pervert.” A 35-year-old working woman tersely said, “I am married.” “So bring your husband along,” I said. (She later posed for me, but not in her husband’s presence.)
Friday, February 24, 2012
A darned good upbringing ...
... Origins | James Russell Ament.
Sounds a lot like mine, except in my family of factory workers they had a fonder view of FDR.
A sleep divided ...
... may prove more restful: BBC News - The myth of the eight-hour sleep.
A doctor's manual from 16th Century France even advised couples that the best time to conceive was not at the end of a long day's labour but "after the first sleep", when "they have more enjoyment" and "do it better".
Barney Rosset - RIP
The death of Barney Rosset, publisher of Grove Press, was reported two days ago. Here's a link to his life and legacy.
More than tests ...
... Schools We Can Envy by Diane Ravitch | The New York Review of Books.
The main mechanism of school reform today is to identify teachers who can raise their students’ test scores every year. If the scores go up, reformers assume, then the students will enroll in college and poverty will eventually disappear. This will happen, the reformers believe, if there is a “great teacher” in every classroom and if more schools are handed over to private managers, even for-profit corporations.
To an American observer, the most remarkable fact about Finnish education is that students do not take any standardized tests until the end of high school. They do take tests, but the tests are drawn up by their own teachers, not by a multinational testing corporation. The Finnish nine-year comprehensive school is a “standardized testing-free zone,” where children are encouraged “to know, to create, and to sustain natural curiosity.”
Problems, problems ...
... With Sale, Phila. Reporters Fear Loss Of Integrity : NPR. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Circulation and advertising are down. A new set of layoffs has been announced, and the papers' newsrooms are about to be combined with the news site Philly.com.
Reporters might also want to wonder why circulation is down. Always bad news when your product doesn't sell and a good idea to try to figure out why. As for combining the newsrooms with Philly.com, it might behoove someone to note that Philly.com is one of the worst newspaper websites around. I've heard from people all over the world who have found it difficult to navigate. Hell, I find it difficult to navigate.
A good chunk of this region does not live in Center City or Mount Airy and does not share the liberal views of those who do. Irrespective of one's views, closing yourself off to a large chunk of readers is not a good idea, especially in a time of declining readership. Also, The Inquirer's principal competition is probably the New York Times. A real book section -- especially one available on your Kindle --would probably help gain readers. But of course the paper would have to hire someone who had a clue about what really does go on online.
Very interesting ...
... New Statesman - Religion for Atheists: a Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The fixation on belief is most prominent in western Christianity, where it results mainly from the distorting influence of Greek philosophy. Continuing this obsession, modern atheists have created an evangelical cult of unbelief. Yet the core of most of the world's religions has always been holding to a way of life rather than subscribing to a list of doctrines. In Eastern Orthodoxy and some currents of Hinduism and Buddhism, there are highly developed traditions that deny that spiritual realities can be expressed in terms of beliefs at all. Though not often recognised, there are parallels between this sort of negative theology and a rigorous version of atheism.
Well, even Thomas Aquinas said that we can only say what God is not, not what He is. What I think it is important to remember is that belief and faith are not the same, and a preoccupation with formulae can prove detrimental to the latter.
Finally, a quibble: Pascal did not convert to Catholicism. He was born a Catholic. He later had a conversion of sorts to Jansenism and later still a more profound conversion following a vision.
And maybe yours, too ...
Maxine tweets that this is "the best article I've yet read on the appeal of crime fiction," and if anyone would know, she would. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The President during the '50s ...
... “Eisenhower in War and Peace” by Jean Edward Smith.
In 1953, when he took office, the United States was in the midst of the Korean War, a conflict the American public loathed. “Ike believed the country wanted peace,” Smith writes, “and he was determined to provide it. War was neither a board game nor a seminar exercise for armchair intellectuals.” So he got the country out of Korea, refused to rescue France from the folly of Dien Bien Phu (thus keeping the United States out of Vietnam) and declined to go along with France and England in their subsequent folly at Suez.
Thought for the day ...
But, when the work was finished, the Craftsman kept wishing that there were someone to ponder the plan of so great a work, to love its beauty, and to wonder at its vastness.
- Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, born on this date in 1463
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Good move ...
... Religion News Service | Faith | Doctrine & Practice | Tempers flare over priest fired over Mass prayers.
Braxton said in the Feb. 14 letter that "several" parishioners of St. Mary's had brought audio and video evidence to the bishop "which showed the many changes and omissions Fr. Rowe makes in the Mass."
"He mentioned in the letter that we clash in our ecclesiology -- our image of the church," said Rowe, 72. "He's right. He seems to consider the church as the bishops', and my notion is that the church starts with the people."
Father Rowe doesn't seem to care that it was some of his own parishioners who objected. And ecclesiology involves a good deal more than one's image of the church. Finally, the reason you have a liturgy is that all can participate. Not too easy to participate in the padre's improvised version.
Signs of the time ...
... Anecdotal Evidence: `The First Obvious Evidence of Spring'.
The woods that surrounded the house in Torresdale where I mostly grew would be filled with spring beauties and trout lilies (yellow adder's-tongues) -- usually in early spring where we were.
The Instapundit reviews ...
... 'The Leaderless Revolution' - Washington Times.
Mr. Ross' discussion veers between leftist talking points about bankers, climate change and the evils of the war on terrorism on the one hand and a rather unfocused discussion of the need for some sort of collective action to ring in the brave new world. He concludes with a set of recommendations that appear to come from bumper stickers (“Big picture, small deeds,” a rather thin rewrite of “Think globally, act locally”) or from self-help tracts (“Locate your convictions”). Even if you believe, as I do, that ordinary people will take power and change politics in the 21st century, this book fails to live up to its subtitle’s promise of showing how that will be done.
Odd list ...
... Who are the most influential writers? | Books | guardian.co.uk. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I suppose they have exerted influence on other writers, but whether they have a com[parable impact on readers is perhaps doubtful.
Sad anniversary ...
... John Keats – Bright Star - The Dabbler. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Dave also sends along Posthumous Keats.
Writers in the family ...
... Blood and ink - FT.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The subject of the best essay here is John Cheever, the American writer who once said: “Everything I write is autobiographical.” For Tóibín, this isn’t quite so. “Like a lot of writers, everything he wrote had a basis in autobiography,” he says of Cheever by way of correction, “and another in wishful or dreamy thinking.”
Thought for the day ...
Art must be parochial in the beginning to be cosmopolitan in the end.
- George Moore, born on this date in 1852
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Creating the future ...
... Book Review: Abundance - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Given all the talk nowadays about income inequality, the authors' discussion of poverty is especially instructive. The number of people in the world living in absolute poverty has fallen by more than half since the 1950s. At the current rate of decline it will reach zero by around 2035. Groceries today cost 13 times less than 150 years ago in inflation-adjusted dollars. In short, the standard of living has improved: 95% of Americans now living below the poverty line have not only electricity and running water but also Internet access, a refrigerator and a television—luxuries that Andrew Carnegie's millions couldn't have bought at any price a century ago.
Affirming turnips ...
... and more: The Annotated Emerson - The Barnes & Noble Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Writing for longevity ...
... Poetry: In praise of the Poetry of Poise | OregonLive.com.(Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Matching face and mask ...
... Book Review: The Fry Chronicles - WSJ.com.
"Wanting to be liked is often a very unlikeable characteristic," Mr. Fry writes in his new memoir. "Certainly I don't like it in myself. But then, there is a lot in myself that I don't like." To name one: the intellectual and verbal facility—"my fundamental dishonesty"—that made him so good at exams (and, presumably, live television). "There are plenty who are more obviously show-offy than I am, but that is what is so creepy about my particular brand of exhibitionism—I mask it in a cloak of affable modesty and touching false diffidence."
Back later ...
It is just after 7 a.m. as I write this. In a few minutes I will be leaving for a busy day around town. Blogging will resume when I return.
Hmm ...
... The Great American Novel | The Weekly Standard.
It is sobering to reflect that between 1837—when Victoria ascended the throne and Dickens’s first novel, The Pickwick Papers, was published—and 1901—the year of Victoria’s death—some 7,000 authors published more than 60,000 novels in England. How much of that vast literary cataract has stood the test of time? How can we hope that our perfervid literary output will escape the exigent discriminations visited upon all prior periods? Jonathan Franzen. Bret Easton Ellis. Jay McInerney. Dave Eggers. Toni Morrison. Feel free to extend the list: Criticism is not prophecy, nevertheless I predict those and many other glittering darlings of the moment will be forgotten as surely as those 59,967 novels from the Victorian period whose names, for us, are writ in water.
Thought for the day ...
Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.
- Arthur Schopenhauer, born on this is date in 1788
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Today's must-read ...
... The American Conservative - Know Your Gnostics. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This is the best argument I have read that makes me think I may have been wrong in my support of the Iraq invasion. I still think Iraq has to be better off without Saddam Hussein. But this piece does make a strong case that, in typical American fashion, we did not have sufficient historical perspective to understand what complications we might be facing. The problem ultimately, though, is that we can never know those sorts of things. We have to make decisions in real time in real circumstances, and the world keeps moving along, providing us with ever-new and usually dangerous circumstances. It would be nice to say simply that I may have been wrong (though in saying that I do not in any way concede anything to people who opposed that policy for purely political reasons), but we are talking about something that caused a lot of people on all sides to die. One more reminder that ideas do indeed have consequences. We should all bear that in mind as a way of curbing our enthusiasms.
Something really to look forward to ...
... First look: Benedict Cumberbatch in Parade’s End | Radio Times. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Local talk ...
... Frog Hair to Woolies: Dust Bunnies by 173 Other Names - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What does a patient in the South mean when he complains of dew poison? What does a waitress in California mean when she offers you coffee and snails? Where would you go if a New Englander directed you to the willywags?
The lunacies of scientists ...
... Review: Electrified Sheep by Alex Boese - The Dabbler. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Perhaps we would do well to temper somewhat our admiration for science and its practitioners.
For the sake of thoroughness he proceeded to electrocute his genitals, with consequences too interesting to report on a family website.
Perhaps we would do well to temper somewhat our admiration for science and its practitioners.
And maybe less than we think ...
... Cosmologists Try to Explain a Universe Springing From Nothing - NYTimes.com.
There is a deeper nothing in which even the laws of physics are absent. Where do the laws come from? Are they born with the universe, or is the universe born in accordance with them? Here Dr. Krauss, unhappily in my view, resorts to the newest and most controversial toy in the cosmologist’s toolbox: the multiverse, a nearly infinite assemblage of universes, each with its own randomly determined rules, particles and forces, that represent solutions to the basic equations of string theory — the alleged theory of everything, or perhaps, as wags say, anything.
Within this landscape of possibilities, almost anything goes.And that, of course, is the problem.
A question of loyalty ...
A New Direction for Christian Historians? | Books and Culture. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The worry is that by seeking success with that audience, Christian historians have failed to be sufficiently Christian. Again, the question is one of loyalty to one's fundamental commitments, but this time it is commitment to Christ that matters. One contributor to the book finds it "difficult to accept the ease with [which] colleagues at Christian colleges seem to regard the status, respectability, power and glory … that [come] with 'making it'" in academia, and wants "to figure out if the 'foolishness' of the Gospel … offers any insights into what a Christian intellectual might look like."
Kindred spirits ...
... Anecdotal Evidence: `Beauty Ever Ancient, Ever New'. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Despite the obvious differences, Rodriguez reminds me of Murphy. Both men are gay. Both are seriously Roman Catholic. Both revere tradition. Both might be called cultural outsiders who don’t cultivate “Outsider” status, who reject the poseur trappings of culturally sanctioned bohemia. Both have refused the claims of “identity politics” and write as individuals.
Intelligent rustic ...
... Butterfield’s Brilliance. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
... Butter- field sought to stress what Whig histori- ans as different as Macaulay and Acton had underestimated: the pastness of the past, its inability to guarantee a happy present ending.
Thought for the day ...
All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.
- W.H. Auden, born on this date in 1907
The writer as copy editor...
...Cormac McCarthy, Quantum Copy Editor
I miss my days as a copy editor sometimes (I used to work for Business Standard, a business newspaper based in Delhi). It gives great pleasure to work on an unedited copy. Really muscles up your own writing.
I miss my days as a copy editor sometimes (I used to work for Business Standard, a business newspaper based in Delhi). It gives great pleasure to work on an unedited copy. Really muscles up your own writing.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Moral leitmotivs ...
... The Abbey That Jumped the Shark by James Fenton | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Dave also sends along this: Julian Fellowes Overcomes His Scruples and Looks Back at Season 2 of ‘Downton Abbey’.
Dave also sends along this: Julian Fellowes Overcomes His Scruples and Looks Back at Season 2 of ‘Downton Abbey’.
Recognize these people?
... Quiz: can you name these fictional characters? | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)
Making room ...
... for the supernatural: Holy Trinity | Masaccio | A Convergence of Faith and Reason | Masterpiece by Jack Flam - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Not too enlightened ...
... The University Bookman: The Substance of Nothing. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
First, as Harold Berman and Brian Tierney among others have shown, the origins of rights lie, not in abstract secular theorizing, but in the religious thought and practice of the middle ages, buttressed and spread by a plurality of legal (including ecclesiastical) jurisdictions that tamed the powers of kings. Second, as thinkers from philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville to sociologist Robert Nisbet have pointed out, the era of “enlightenment” saw, not liberation, but brutal political centralization and the elimination of the ecclesiastical sphere as part of the birth of modern tyranny. Third, and most relevant here, Horwitz overlooks the highly destructive means and bigoted intentions behind the shift from “orthodoxy-with-toleration” to “true liberalism.”
Thought for the day ...
Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses.
- Georges Bernanos, born on this date in 1888
Out of Africa...
...Africa can remind the world of the capitalist way
Africa is quietly catching up after a period of isolation from the rest of the world between the late 1990s through to 2008. Policymaking has justifiably been criticised for its multi-decade approach of ring-fencing Africa. This created an “us-versus-them” culture, which hinged on one set of development policies – trade, foreign direct investment, capital market access – for certain countries like China, India, Brazil, but prescribed an aid-centric policy for other (mainly African) countries.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Traditional panorama ...
... Bryan Appleyard - A Capital Fellow: John Lanchester. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
... in Lanchester’s new and mighty 650-page novel, Capital, Arabella is exactly the same at the end as she is at the beginning — frigid and uncaring, lost in her vicious dreams of self-concern. She cares nothing for her children, less for her husband. Sustained by her villainous friend Saskia, even as the 2008 crash looms, her only concerns are spas and spending. She doesn’t feel entitled, she is entitlement incarnate.
It seems to me ...
... that this whole evolution vs. religion debate is fundamentally askew.
I can't see how any reasonably informed person can doubt that some
process of continuous change has been going on among living things.
So the debate would seem to come down to whether or not this process
is absolutely random or utterly purposeful (the question of its being
a fruitful mix of both we shall bracket for now).
Now it would seem that
the only basis one would have for deciding this is the manner in
which one experiences things oneself. I – and, I believe, most
people – experience life as purposeful. From this it seems
reasonable – though not necessarily correct – to infer that we feel that way because that is the way it
is.
To premise your thesis – as I'm afraid the random folk must –
on a denial of a common, well-nigh universal experience is to build
your theoretical house on sand. This is not, by the way, comparable
to thinking the earth flat and discovering later that it's a sphere.
You can only have an experience when you have it. We have learned to perceive better. But both perceptions – of a flat or round earth – are grounded in experience.
It is simply that a subsequent experience has proved corrective to
the earlier one. It is a larger experience, as it were.
So to argue that the sense of purposefulness that we feel inner-mostly is an illusion seems to me very difficult to demonstrate, since it involves a denial of what people count on to verify things, namely,
their experience of them.
After all, if we can't trust our sense of purpose, the feeling we have that we have a choice – in short, our sense of self-hood – exactly why should we trust our powers of reasoning?
After all, if we can't trust our sense of purpose, the feeling we have that we have a choice – in short, our sense of self-hood – exactly why should we trust our powers of reasoning?
Invaluable mosquito ...
... Bryan Appleyard - Rupert Sheldrake’s Alternative Science. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Science is not an unchanging edifice of knowledge, it is constantly in flux and one age’s certainties are often overthrown in an instant, as Newton was by Einstein. Currently, the glaring failure of genetics to produce the medical outcomes we were promised could signal that the human genome is not, after all, our destiny or our identity.
Letter by letter ...
... Book review: V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton | Petrona.
Maxine has a few other reviews that you will want to check out as well.
Thought for the day ...
The mind is like a richly woven tapestry in which the colors are distilled from the experiences of the senses, and the design drawn from the convolutions of the intellect.
- Carson McCullers, born on this date in 1917
Your chance to learn what MBA's all about!
As some of you may know, I am an MBA student in India and as part of my last assignment on campus, I have been asked to prepare a Brand Asset Valuator model for Nike. This model follows a survey methodology to figure out how the brand stands on four metrics: Differentiation, Relevance, Esteem and Knowledge.
So here's the survey. Pls be kind and fill it in (the more responses I get, the more muscular my analysis!) Some of the questions may be India-specific. You can skip those.
Many thanks! I hope Frank doesn't kill me for this sort of shameless plugging!
So here's the survey. Pls be kind and fill it in (the more responses I get, the more muscular my analysis!) Some of the questions may be India-specific. You can skip those.
Many thanks! I hope Frank doesn't kill me for this sort of shameless plugging!
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Try this ...
... Thomas Edison’s Eccentric Job Interview Questions — A Cheat Sheet - Mental Floss.
I got nine right. So I wouldn't have been hired,
I got nine right. So I wouldn't have been hired,
Sounds about right ...
... Think of England: Richard Dawkins - blowing the legacy. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I think it's pretty funny when Dawkins can't remember the full title of The Origin of Species. Even I knew that. I also think that Dawkins long ago lost any basis for being taken seriously as a scientist, simply because he doesn't really do any science and hasn't for decades.He is a person with little philosophical training (and I would say even less talent) who has decided to "philosophize" about science for a living.
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